DAVID DRAIMAN: 'Ninety Percent Of The Time, I'm A Laid-Back Teddy-Bear Dude'

Bob Zerull of Zoiks! Online recently conducted an interview with DISTURBED and DEVICE lead singer David Draiman. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

Zoiks! Online: When a band first starts out, there are no boundaries. As you get more and more successful, you get pigeonholed into a sound. Were you getting frustrated with that in DISTURBED?

Draiman: No, no, no, not really. Truth be told, the reason for the hiatus was simply time. We were talking about twelve years of make a record, tour, make a record, tour. You become predictable. People know that they can see you every other summer. They know they can get an album from you every other year and that breeds complacency and it breeds lack of inspiration. There are definitely confines within the style of DISTURBED that we needed to stay true to, but we've always pushed that envelope. We always continued to develop with each successive record. It's not like we were holding ourselves back per se; that wasn't really the reason for it. It was important for the fans, for the band, for all of us to just step away from this leviathan we created together and let it sleep for a little bit. Let us garner new appreciation for it; let us realize how precious it really is. We get to do some other things, have some time to step off of the assembly line and the machine and that gave me the opportunity to work with the legendary Dave Mustaine on a couple of tracks on the "Super Collider" record. It gave me the time to produce the new TRIVIUM record, which is next-level stuff. It's going to be a defining moment in their career, this record for them. It's given me the opportunity to do this [DEVICE], and this wasn't necessarily an intended project. This is something that just came together quite by accident. It was never really the intention of actually starting something else. The songs and the music and the art that you create sometimes take on a life of their own.

Zoiks! Online: I love the album, is DEVICE going to become a full-time band?

Draiman: Absolutely. It already is. I expect the two entities to exist within unison of one another. I intend to and I do treat this band with the same level of reverence, intensity and respect that I do DISTURBED. Both will continue to coexist as far as I'm concerned.

Zoiks! Online: How do you deal with criticism? Do you just let it roll off your shoulders?

Draiman: Yeah, man. I have big shoulders. [laughs] It's all right. I've been dealing with it my whole career, my whole life. It is what it is. I really don't sweat it. I concentrate far more on the people that appreciate it and love it than the people that don't. To be perfectly honest, and put it into contextual terms, the lion does not a care about the affairs of the sheep. It doesn't make a difference to me. Everybody these days, and in the Internet age, where you have this troll society or predatory animals that get off on picking fights with people left and right and trying to be all big and bad behind a keyboard who wouldn't dare say the majority of the things that they would go ahead and say online to the average individual to a person's face and certainly not mine. It really doesn't faze me. I kind of laugh it off, to be honest with you. Occasionally I'll actually engage with them in a bit of sport. [laughs] OK, you wanna go? Let's go for a little bit. Let me show you just how stupid you sound. That's really what "Vilify" is kind of about — all these guys that try to make me out to be some sort of demogodish egomaniacal prick, I'm so laid back and chill until you cross and then I'm not so laid back and chill anymore. I don't really worry about it too much. It's not worth my time.

Zoiks! Online: A lot of front men have a hard time separating their persona on stage from who they really are. Is that something that you find difficult to separate?

Draiman: Not for me, but it's difficult for other people to separate, because they automatically assume that I'm that guy that's up there that has to be forceful and has to be powerful and demanding and a little pushy. That's what it takes. People come to a show like this to be driven and to be inspired to release their energy, to get the negativity out. That's my job. I'm their to whip you into a frenzy and get you to forget about the trials and tribulations and problems in your life for however long we're playing up there and feel powerful. To do that, you can't show any fear, you have to harness every single bit of your anger, your aggression, your strength, your fury, everything and focus it and project it to the audience. That's what they see and they'll automatically assume that's the guy that steps off the stage too. Truth be told, it's a very definitive side of my persona but that's not all of me. Ninety percent of the time, I'm a laid-back teddy-bear dude. [laughs] I'm not looking to get into it with anybody.

You can read the entire interview at Zoiks! Online.